Fully Alive @Work

Fully Alive @Work

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Fully Alive @Work
ROLLING IN THE DEEP

ROLLING IN THE DEEP

How do you enable Onlyness in teams? By having their backs, no matter what.

Nilofer Merchant's avatar
Nilofer Merchant
Jan 30, 2022
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Fully Alive @Work
Fully Alive @Work
ROLLING IN THE DEEP
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I will be starting a new job in about ten days. And I want to put into practice the ideas you wrote about in a “Matter of Trust.”  

My goal is two-fold.

I want to be myself in this new role. I know from experience that my success in any job —and the value the organization gets from my work— is strongly and directly correlated with how open I am and the extent to which I bring my Onlyness to work. 

And, I want to create an environment where every person on the team (and everyone else I work with!) can feel free and safe to bring their Onlyness to work. I know this means believing in people building trust and empathy, but I don't know what all this means and what I still need to learn and practice. 

To distill this into a question, how can I build a team and an environment where Onlyness thrives as a leader who is new to an organization? I will be building a significant function in a newly formed subsidiary of a large corporation. I will have one team member in place on day one, so I will build my team mostly from scratch.

Hey there, Builder: 

What is the opposite of Onlyness? 

What is it that decenters one’s own ability to add value, so we’re not ourselves at work? 

The answer? Conformity. 

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